


Haydn's Head

by christinefromsherwood



Series: 007 Fest 2020 [7]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), The Hour (TV)
Genre: Eve Moneypenny & Q Friendship, F/F, Female Freddie Lyon, Humor, Lingerie, Meet-Cute, Post-SPECTRE, very silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:28:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25110898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinefromsherwood/pseuds/christinefromsherwood
Summary: Moneypenny was going to kill James when she saw him next. She was going to kill him dead. And when he asked: “What was that for?” She’d say: “I can shoot you to jog your memory, if you like.”He’d just… left. With that girl and with Q’s car. Without saying goodbye.She was going to kill him.“So Rosenbaum was completely obsessed with phrenology. And Haydn was his friend,” Q was babbling at her, a feverish look in his eyes.a prequel topossible
Relationships: Freddie Lyon/Eve Moneypenny
Series: 007 Fest 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809718
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	Haydn's Head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Castillon02](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Castillon02/gifts).



> written for Moneypenny Monday and for castillon who challenged with using the dialogue prompt: "I can shoot you to jog your memory, if you like."
> 
> Anon prompt: #111/2018 - eve and q go lingerie shopping
> 
> Prequel to [possible](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926937) (00q fic)
> 
> Also related to all my [Moneypenny Headcanons](https://christinefromsherwood.tumblr.com/tagged/moneypenny%20monday)

Moneypenny was going to kill James when she saw him next. She was going to kill him dead. And when he asked: “What was that for?” She’d say: “I can shoot you to jog your memory, if you like.”

He’d just… left. With that girl and with Q’s car. Without saying goodbye. The prick.

She was going to kill him. 

“So Rosenbaum was completely obsessed with phrenology. And Haydn was his friend,” Q was babbling at her, a feverish look in his eyes. 

M had put him on leave after signing off on the Aston Martin requisition he’d obviously faked on Bond’s behalf. 

Moneypenny had reason to believe that he’d spent the week binging YouTube videos. The reason was that she’d found him on his sofa burritoed in a blanket doing just that, when she'd finally braved the cathair-infested lair he called his flat. 

“Yes?” she prompted when Q suddenly faltered and instead absentmindedly stirred cream into his coffee.

“So... Rosenbaum wanted to study Haydn’s skull, so he organized a heist to rob his grave when he died.”

And then she was choking on her own coffee and wheezing and Q hurried to slap her on the back.

“What?” she croaked and pushed Q away when he was coming in to attack her back again.

“What what?”

Moneypenny took a sip of water. “When you say Haydn, you mean Haydn-Haydn? The composer?”

Q nodded rapidly. “And he kept the skull in a glass box until Haydn’s body was exhumed because of reasons and they found the head wasn’t there and when the police came looking he hid it in his bed and told his wife to get in and pretend to be on her period so the police wouldn’t look there.”

Moneypenny blinked, took a sip of coffee and carefully swallowed. That was a lot of information to process in two seconds.

“Q, darling, what are you trying to say?”

He shrugged and dinged his coffee spoon on the rim of his cup. “It felt like a good metaphor for the Aston… up until it didn’t.” 

Taking a deep breath, Moneypenny got to her feet. “That’s it. Get up, loser, we’re going shopping.” 

She was going to murder James when he came back.

* * *

Freddie kept trying not to eye the pair in the next aisle. 

She’d noticed the woman as soon as she walked into the shop and thought: “Oh this _is_ my lucky day!” 

Because _she_ was _gorgeous,_ dark eyes sparkling, tight curls in a high bun... The summer sunshine from the shop window made her dark brown skin glow and Freddie was…

Freddie had a bad habit of crushing on people who were woefully unavailable.

So of course the next person to walk in had been the boyfriend. Tall and lanky and looking like he’d rather be doing an Irish jig barefoot in a room full of Legos than help his gorgeous girlfriend shop for lingerie. 

Freddie scoffed silently. Of course he did. Straight men. They’d drool over all the models on billboards, but going bra shopping with one was like dragging along a useless blob of hemming and hawing. Freddie pushed the memory of Hector begging her to come along to help him pick Valentine's Day presents for Bel and Marnie to the back of her mind. Bel was a _friend_ , a friend who was insanely happy with Marnie and Hector. 

And this lady was here shopping with her _boyfriend_. So Freddie shook her head, deciding not to pay any more attention to the couple, and instead focus on finding that one pair of stockings she’d seen on the website. 

Except then she’d heard: “Eve, grab your see-through knickers and go, go, go, go,” and something shoved against her shoulder and she was falling into a bra display.

* * *

Getting Q to come to the pet shop was not a difficult task at all. Moneypenny got some crickets for her chameleon and then had to wait for half an hour while Q was deciding between a toy mouse stuffed with catnip or a packet of treats to help with proper kidney function. (He bought both in the end.) Convincing him to follow her into Victoria’s Secret, however, took some doing. (Partially it was most likely because it was on New _Bond_ Street.)

Finally, she had to promise him that no, no woman inside would think he’d come in to spy on them and that she would personally explain to anyone who even _seemed_ like they might be looking at him accusingly that he was extremely gay and not at all interested in looking at their breasts. 

So there they were with Q humming or shrugging his shoulders when she presented him with this or that lacey pattern, steadily growing more animated and like himself after he’d found a pair of panties with a skulls pattern.

“But it’s Haydn’s head, Eve! You have to at least consider it!” He waved the panties at her, grinning.

“Alright,” she laughed. “There. I’ve considered it. I’m not getting them.”

And then she saw it! The most gorgeous, impractical, sheer teddy with a deep plunge neckline and lace applique on the shoulders and the bikini line!

She hadn’t come looking for a teddy--she’d wanted to treat herself with a new pretty, post-breakup bra--but that didn’t matter.

“Hold this.” She slapped the pet shop bag against Q’s chest and reached out to feel the fabric with both hands. 

Gorgeous! It was like plunging her fingers into a warm spring of water; the fabric flowed over her hands and caressed her skin and she winced when she saw the price tag but this was supposed to be a treat and she was _so_ getting--

“Oh fuck, the Haydns are loose.” Moneypenny knew that voice. That was Q’s “oh fuck, I forgot to close the door and the cats got in the agents' lockers” voice. She spun around.

“What did you do?”

Q was standing there, pet shop bag in one hand, the other grasping at air. The plastic box that _used to_ hold her live brown crickets lay on its side on the floor.

“The motif on their backs, it looked a bit like a skull,” Q explained, staring in horror at the insects as they rapidly jumped and skipped and bounced to freedom. Then suddenly he was on the move.

“Eve, grab your see-through knickers and go, go, go, go!”

“What? What are you doing? I’m not going to shoplift from Victoria’s Secret!” But Q was already bending over, scooping as many brown crickets as he could back into the container, and striding off. 

Eve snatched the teddy off the rack and sped in the other direction. 

Later, she could never explain how it was that she hadn’t noticed Freddie standing there. She just hadn’t. She only knew that one moment she was speeding away from the scene of Q’s crime and the next she was falling and landing on top of someone warm and bony. 

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, are you alright?” she cried out, immediately getting up and holding out her hand to help the other woman stand. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so sorry.”

A pair of extremely judgemental green eyes met her gaze. 

“Were you perhaps thinking that you wanted to get away from your weird, shoplifting boyfriend?” 

Moneypenny frowned as the woman stood up on her own and was straightening her hair. Her gorgeous, thick, dark brown, wavy mane of short hair. 

“What? No!” The woman was still piercing her with her eyes, then she shrugged.

“What were you doing then?” 

Moneypenny looked around for a floor manager before she answered. “I was trying to get to the counter to pay for this,” she held up the teddy, “before anyone noticed that he,” she pointed to a rack of garter belts which Q pretended to be studying intensely, “let loose the live crickets I bought to feed my pet chameleon, Bruce.” 

The woman stared, something sparkled in her eyes. Moneypenny decided she liked it. 

“And, I promised him to tell you this: He is not at all interested in looking at your breasts because he’s extremely gay.”

“Excellent,” said the woman with a smile and held out her hand. “So am I.”

She took it, not even trying to fight the feeling of things suddenly falling into place. “Eve Moneypenny.”

“Freddie Lyon, a pleasure.”


End file.
